The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01

by Ricardo Pinto

  The scarlet mass slid down a little as Ykoriana knelt on her ranga. Her gold face bent towards the youth's ear.

  'Sardian, have you become so decrepit that you must needs use your own son as a stick?' The youth's voice was smooth as honey but more sweet. Homunculi mutterings echoed it.

  The Regent must know how long and perilous a journey I have had returning to Osrakum,' said Suth.

  'We have heard something of it,' said the melodious voice. 'Do you come here as He-who-goes-before or as Suth Sardian?'

  That is in your choice, Celestial.'

  Every word was repeated by the homunculi.

  'I would talk without the Wise.'

  The Empress flicked open a hand like a fan in a gesture of dismissal. The Sapients released the muttering throats of their homunculi who hand in hand fled away into the darkness.

  'Must their masters stay?' asked Suth.

  'You forget, my Lord, that though I am Regent the rigour of my purdah must still be observed,' said the melodious voice.

  'It is not only you, Celestial, who have suffered seclusion.'

  'Did you then suffer much those long years you spent in the wilderness?' purred the youth. 'Do you mock me, Madam?' 'Perhaps a little. We have led parallel lives.' 'You chose the suffering for us both.' Thwarted love is the charioteer of vengeful deeds.'

  Tell me, Ykoriana, have your acts of vengeance brought you joy?'

  'Vengeance is a pale creature in comparison to joy, but still, Sardian, she is brighter than darkness.'

  'A darkness of your own making.'

  Laughter rang out from behind the golden mask making the youth turn round and gaze up at it.

  'Sardian, I do think you could take a little more pride in your handiwork,' said the Empress in her own, rich voice.

  This was no work of mine,' he said in outrage.

  'How not? My husband, now sadly deceased, told me I could buy my eyes with your release.'

  Suth shook his head. 'I was horrified when I heard what had been done to you.'

  'Spare me your pity.'

  'Outrage rather than pity, Ykoriana. Such mutilation was without precedent.'

  The Wise found that it was not, my Lord. When I would not bend to my husband's will, he asked them to enforce an ancient form of purdah. Oh, they put me into the dark gladly enough. They envy others the life of sensation that is denied to them.'

  'You cannot hate all the world, Ykoriana.'

  'Do not presume to lecture me, my Lord, on hatred. On that subject I am as learned as the Wise.'

  'Let go your bitterness, Ykoriana, lest it should consume you with its fire.'

  She chuckled. 'Do you know he never stopped loving you? All I achieved by sending you away was to make you even more permanent in his heart. The Wise claim that embalming makes the dead live for ever. I thought if I brought you back from your tomb in the sea, your faded beauty, your bitterness would poison the memory of the youth he clung to. It was this that made me release you from your blood oath. But you cheated me even of that small hope. Tell me, Sardian, why did you not return when once more you could?'

  'I feared what you might do to my son.'

  The Empress braced herself on the youth. Her head fell. 'You know how much I loved Azurea. How could I ever harm her son?'

  'You really think you did not harm him, forcing him to grow up outside in the wilderness’

  Ykoriana sat back. 'Have you forgotten the offer I made you long ago? My quarrel was never with the child.'

  'Perhaps I misjudged you.'

  'It is too late for apologies, Sardian, too late for regrets.'

  'Is it too late for him to know his mother's sister?'

  Ykoriana turned her mask away. 'Have him speak that I might hear his voice.'

  Suth urged his son forward. Carnelian obeyed him and found himself staring up at the Dowager Empress in her widow's robes.

  ‘Speak then ... nephew,' she said.

  Carnelian licked his lips. 'Celestial ... I do not know what it is that you wish me to say.'

  The Dowager Empress's mask nodded. 'Perhaps there is something of her in your voice. Sardian, does he look like Azurea?'

  'Very much.'

  A sound of footfalls was coming up behind them. Carnelian turned to see a pillar of green jewel fire sweeping towards them from out of the dark. He saw the mask floating high above and the horned crowns.

  'Celestial, I did not expect...' he heard his father say, then Suth bowed his sun-crowned head as the Jade Lord swept past trailing a quetzal-feathered cloak.

  Carnelian knelt watching the cloak slide past. The faces of the Sapients had turned towards the Jade Lord. With his staff, one of them ratded out a rhythm on the floor. The Jade Lord loomed above the Sapient. Carnelian imagined he could feel his hot anger. The homunculi were streaming back. As they folded into their masters' embraces, they began to mutter, first one then another until all had murmured the word 'Molochite'. The Sapients bowed and then opened their fence to let the Jade Lord through. He climbed the steps towards the Dowager Empress, who put out a hand that he caught and folded in his own. Carnelian watched their hands flow in each other's lasciviously and saw that the homunculi were watching too, murmuring, relaying every touch back to the hands at their throats.

  'Jade Lord Molochite, I was talking to the Regent,' his father said.

  'Well, now you can talk to us both who shall soon be wed.'

  'Does the Regent wish that I should speak before her son and the Wise? What I came to say would be better said to her alone.'

  Ykoriana leaned towards the youth who said, 'It matters naught to me. Say what you came to say in the hearing of my son, and of the Wise too.'

  Suth glanced down at Carnelian. He lifted both his staves and brought them down again with a clack.

  Then, Celestial, you force me to speak as He-who-goes-before.'

  Molochite stood beside his mother, holding her hand like a child. 'Well, get on with it.'

  'When I wear the Pomegranate Ring I am become merely the lens through which the Clave focuses its will. I am acting in a similar capacity for your other son.

  Nephron bade me say to you that should you cease your opposition to his election he would give you thereafter such freedoms as you have been deprived of. I stand here witness to his blood oath.'

  Again the Dowager Empress threw back her crowned head and laughed like a girl. 'What gift is it to a bird to open its cage once it has forgotten the freedom of the sky? Besides, even the Twins cannot give me back my sight.'

  ‘Sacrilege, Celestial, you come close to sacrilege,' shrilled one of the homunculi.

  She laughed again, then looked at Suth. 'Still, you and Aurum have built about me a wall of votes that I can see no way to breach.'

  Molochite tore his hand out of hers and came to the edge of the dais to look down. 'By my burning blood, Suth, I swear that when I become God Emperor, I shall bend all my power to pursuing your House to ruin.'

  Carnelian felt his hackles rising.

  Ykoriana's hand let go of the youth's chain and reached up to tug upon Molochite's sleeve. He turned the malice of his eyeslits on her. For moments, Carnelian was convinced that he would strike his mother, but then he moved back to stand by her side. She stroked his hand.

  'It is Aurum who is its architect. Once the election is over I intend to retire to my coomb to live in quiet retreat with my son. I am not your enemy.'

  'Perhaps that is so, Sardian.'

  Carnelian watched the three masks looking at each other.

  Ykoriana's was the first to turn away. 'But I will not abandon my beloved. Several days have yet to pass before the House of the Masks and the Great meet in the Chamber of the Three Lands, and only then will this be decided. Until that time, my son and I are content enough to leave our fates entirely in the hands of the Chosen.'

  'I will take this answer back to Nephron. Be certain, Celestial, I shall do what can be done in urging him to free you, notwithstanding your response.'

&nb
sp; 'Until the election, then. But lest your faction should become too proud, My-Lord-who-goes-before, remember that even the sun is bound by earth and sky.'

  Suth's mask looked at her a while. 'I shall remember.'

  Ykoriana terminated the audience with her hand.

  Suth bowed his sunburst head. Syblings appeared to relieve him of his staves and he turned away. Carnelian walked beside him all the way back to the Iron Door where the Hanuses awaited them. The syblings bowed but when their head came up their eyes, living and stone, lingered gluttonously on Carnelian's face. It was only with the closing of the door that Carnelian was free of them.

  In the gloom of the Sun in Splendour the Ichorians lowered his father's dull fire to the ground. Carnelian stared at him. The journey back down the Approach had been even harder than the climb. Somehow his father had avoided falling. Somehow he had managed each one of the myriad steps. But when they reached the waiting Ichorians and the dais, his father stopped and would move no more till Carnelian had begun to think that he had died and only the stiff robe kept him upright still. At last, he had had to have him carried onto the dais. There, the knees of his ranga had bent, though Carnelian had no way of knowing whether it was his father who had knelt or simply that his ranga had collapsed. All the way back, blinded by the throng, deafened by the storming shawms, Carnelian had had to follow fearing that at any moment his father would topple to the ground.

  Now they were alone in the Sun in Splendour, Carnelian found the courage to step up onto the dais. Each step he took made his father tremble. He stopped when he was standing very close. With his father kneeling, and him on his ranga, they were of a height.

  'Father?' he said.

  It seemed quite natural that the huge, golden puppet should make no response. Carnelian became desperate to look inside to know if the suit had become his father's sarcophagus. He reached out to run his fingers down the edges of his father's sun-eyed mask. Finding the bands, he followed these back over ears that seemed to be made of leather. His fingers traced the bands into narrow channels that burrowed round into the sculptural mass of his crowns. His fingers came together at a knot. They struggled to undo it, then carefully removed the mask. He stifled a cry as he exposed the closed eyes. The face had the texture of weeping wax. He moaned as he stroked it. He thought the sighing was his own till he saw a quiver in the pale lips.

  'Father, O Father?'

  'So ... tired,' said the lips.

  Carnelian kissed him. 'We'll soon get you to bed.'

  He carefully replaced the mask and walked away with many glances back. He raged through the tunnel into the chamber of doors, scattering Ichorians. He demanded that they go and find their commander and then went to his father's apartments and dug out House Suth attendants. He had them in tow when he met the grand-cohort commander. He had the man send for a Sapient from the Domain of Immortality and made him remove all his Ichorians between the Sun in Splendour and his father's chambers. When the commander hesitated, Carnelian said, 'He is dying,' in such chill tones that the man immediately did his bidding.

  With some of his people, Carnelian returned to the Sun in Splendour where, towering over them, he directed them as they freed his father. He watched as they disassembled his sunburst crown and opened the shell of his robe. He shouted at them to be careful as they lifted the sagging body down from the huge ranga. He had them shield it as they carried it in its under-robes to his father's chamber.

  As he waited, Carnelian removed his father's mask. He watched every breath from on high, fearing to look away even for a moment lest doing so might let the chest stop its rise and fall. When the Sapients came with ammonites they drove him out of the chamber. He stood outside its door and did not leave until a homunculus came to tell him that his father would recover.

  He took the last few heavy steps into his chamber, and even as he heard the door behind him close he bent his knees and groaned as his robe setded its weight onto the floor. 'Master.'

  The voice came from somewhere behind him. For a moment he thought it might be an assassin sent by Ykoriana, and he was glad. 'Come round in front of me,' he said wearily.

  A small figure moved into his vision and fell on its knees. There was too little light to see it clearly.

  'Look at me.'

  A small dark face gazed up.

  Tain!' sobbed Carnelian. Tain, Tain, Tain.' He opened his knees, lifted the burden of his robe and lumbered forward. He slowed, fearing he might topple onto his brother like a tree. He fumbled with his mask; it cut into his jaw as he wrenched it off and flung it away. Tain, stand up, let me hug you.'

  Tain rose unsteadily. He took one step forward and then another. When he was close enough, Carnelian reached down. He had to stretch just to touch Tain's head. Tain looked up at him as if from a deep hole.

  BROKEN MIRROR DAYS

  Apotheosis transforms the candidate into a mirror that in trapping a reflection of the Twins, fixes aspects of Their Duality at the heart of the Three Lands. From this centre emanates with decreasing strength the mandate of the Chosen and the power of their Commonwealth. When the vessel of grace, our Lords the God Emperor, dies, this mirror breaks, cutting the umbilical link between Earth and Sky, the Chosen lose their mandate, the Commonwealth its power. Disharmony and chaos are endemic to these Broken Mirror Days.

  (from a theological codicil compiled in beadcord by the Wise of the Domain of Law)

  To escape the pain of silence, Carnelian told Tain it was time to sleep. Saying nothing, his brother found the darkest edge of floor and huddled down. Carnelian was unhappy with this but said nothing. He laid himself out on his bed and waited, listening to the rasp of Tain's breathing. When its rhythm had slowed he rose and crept over to him. He crouched and peeled his brother carefully from the cold stone. Tain twitched a little but did not wake. Carnelian stood up and winced, for his brother weighed nothing at all. It was like holding a plucked, air-dried bird. He carried the skin and bones over to his bed and arranged them on it carefully. As he put a blanket over Tain, he had the feeling he was covering a corpse.

  He chose to lie upon the floor, telling himself it was because he did not want to lie beside his brother and risk disturbing him. The floor was cold and hard and would not let him sleep. He lay awake remembering the promise he had made to Ebeny that he would look after her sons.

  Carnelian woke and lit a lamp. In its light the face in the bed was as gaunt as an old man's. He watched a bead of sweat run down the cheek then slip into the spiral of the ear. Tain had the sky sickness. Carnelian realized that the signs had been there the night before, although he had seen only the sallow ingrained fear.

  He did not call for servants but dressed himself so as not to wake Tain. He closed the door quietly behind him as he left. He instructed his guardsmen to make no noise and to let no-one enter. He refused an escort and left them.

  In the chamber of doors, Ichorians stood before the entrance to his father's chambers. They looked at him warily as Carnelian walked close enough to see the spirals in their tattoos.

  'I wish to see my father.'

  They bowed and one said, 'He-who-goes-before is being made ready to give audience.'

  'You must be in error. He was too weak ...'

  'Every night our father's weak but morning always finds his strength returned, Master. Surely that's as it should be.'

  'Should be?'

  'He is the Sun who goes before.' Carnelian took some steps away and turned his back on them. However long it took he would wait to see his father miraculously risen from his sickbed. The grand-cohort commander appeared from a tunnel. He gave Carnelian a bow before going to speak to the guards, then he too stood waiting.

  Both turned when they heard the doors opening. The commander and his men fell to their knees. Golden light flooded out and it seemed indeed to be the sun that was moving out between the prostrate Ichorians. Carnelian narrowed his eyes against the coruscating glare of the figure's sunburst crown. He peered, trying to see if this
tower of gold was really his father.

  'You are recovered, my Lord?'

  The figure lifted a white hand, Quite recovered.

  Carnelian still feared that this was an impostor. 'But you seemed beyond such quick resurgence, my Lord.'

  'All that was needed was sleep, my son.'

  Carnelian relaxed. It was his father's voice. 'Still, it might be convenient for my Lord to have me beside him during the business of the day.'

  His father's headshake cast rays among the Ichorians. 'It would be tedious for you, Carnelian.' His father seemed to notice the commander for the first time. 'What news?'

  The Lords of your House, Great Sun, are at one of our postern gates craving audience with you.'

  Suth's hands made a gesture of irritation. 'Not again. I've no time to deal with domestic matters.' He turned to Carnelian. 'Perhaps you, my Lord, might convey my apologies.'

  As Carnelian hesitated, his father was already moving away. 'As my Lord commands,' he called after him. Hearing the doors begin to close, Carnelian looked through them into his father's chambers. There among the prostrate Suth tyadra stood two Sapients of the Domain Immortality looking like charred posts.

  Carnelian allowed the commander to guide him down the tunnel. He was only vaguely aware of the flecks of light moving over him as he passed the loopholes cut into the walls.

  The commander stopped. His hands made embarrassed gestures in Carnelian's direction.

  Carnelian looked down at himself and understood. 'I am not suitably dressed to be seen by the outer world.'

  The commander smiled gratefully and then walked off. Carnelian waited concealed from the postern gate by the curving of the passage. A clatter of many ranga preceded a golden glowing that was coming along the wall. Nine Masters appeared bright and gleaming, towering over the commander and an escort of Ichorians.

  'At last. Is that you, cousin?'

  Carnelian saw the Masters each had chameleon heraldry dancing up their court robes. Ivory plaques in their crowns bore the glyphs of their names. He looked to Spinel and gave a nod.